Ashar Zaidi was excited to see his team putting up a fight against the mighty Indians. He was watching the match from the dressing room during the Asia Cup 2018. A win seemed to be on the cards; the stand-in Indian captain Rohit Sharma and the former skipper M.S. Dhoni looked panick-stricken as their 285-run target was under threat with the openers batting at 174/0. However, the Indian spinners were able to control the situation as Hong Kong, the team that Zaidi was coaching, ended up losing by 26 runs.

Zaidi had joined Hong Kong’s coaching staff only a few days ahead of the all-important Asia Cup. His objective was to give players the much-needed confidence that they had it in them to beat any team in the world.

“Hong Kong is a very exciting team among associate nations and they will be a force to reckon with in the future,” he says. “I worked with the players to help them come up with a game plan with a focus on technique and using tact to perform better in pressure situations. And all credit to the players who picked up all these things in short time to show what they were capable of.”

Despite giving stellar performances on the cricket field and repeatedly getting overlooked by the national selection committee, cricketer Ashar Zaidi did not lose heart. Opportunities came his way, but not on home soil

Zaidi, a veteran county cricketer and a level-three qualified coach, is the perfect person to teach someone how to struggle for success as he himself is a fighter. In 2008, he was in the ICU, fighting for his life with a critical health condition. An infection had affected his heart quite badly. But that was not the sole reason for his deteriorating health.

The son of a hockey player, Zaidi put away his hockey stick to play cricket at the age of 17. Before joining a cricket club, he had only played hockey and tape-ball cricket as a hobby like any other Pakistani kid. But his friends convinced him to join a cricket academy. Though he did not enjoy it at first, he did keep playing the game. And soon cricket replaced hockey as his first love. “It was a hassle in the beginning. There were daylong matches and then running around throughout the day, so I was not enjoying it. But as time passed, I started having fun,” he says.

He was a quick learner and took little time in moulding himself from a tape-ball street cricketer to a proper stylish top-order batsman who could also bowl. At that time, he was around 19 years old. And when he appeared for state-level trials, he got selected straightaway. Moreover, he topped the season with the bat all over Pakistan in the same year at the domestic U-19 level. He quickly made progress and, within a couple of years of playing professional cricket, he was named in the Pakistan U-19 squad for the World Cup in 2000 alongside future Pakistani stars Shoaib Malik,

Imran Nazir, Yasir Arafat, Faisal Iqbal, Hasan Raza and Danish Kaneria.

“I was lucky to reach that level so quickly, but it was not easy for me. I used to bowl to seniors in the nets throughout the day. It was normal for me to not get to bat for three to four days. I had to make an effort to get a chance to bat in the nets,” he recalls.

When Zaidi thought of becoming a professional cricketer, his family was not confident about his choice. Still, his father backed his decision. He was his biggest support. On his return from the U-19 World Cup, his family also started believing in his potential. But a year later, he lost his biggest support as his father passed away. He was now the only living male member in his family. The responsibility of supporting his family during that tough phase fell on him. “It was so hard for me that at one stage I even thought of leaving cricket and doing something else to support my family,” he says.

At that time, his mother stepped up and asked him to do what he desired to do and not worry too much about the family; so he carried on playing. Soon, he got a reward for his tireless hard work, along with some hope of making money through cricket to support his family, when he got a job with the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). He kept playing first class cricket for PTCL and played leagues in England during the off season. Being a consistent performer with the bat, he was selected for a two-day side-game against the touring Zimbabwe team. He was in England at that time but he took time off from the English league and came back to Pakistan to score a double-ton in the warm-up match. They said he could score a thousand runs in two consecutive seasons. Suddenly, he was making headlines. He became the frontrunner for ending the vacuum of quality opening batsmen in the national team.

“In those days, Pakistan were struggling to find a quality opening batsman. No one was performing consistently but I was a regular performer in the domestic circuit for the past two years and it highlighted my game even more,” he says.

Pakistan were to play two series — a tri-series against Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka followed by a Test series against Sri Lanka. The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) personnel assured him that they were considering him and that he would be a part of the team in one of the series. But all those promises turned out to be hollow. Misbah Ul Haq, Salman Butt and Bazid Khan, all debuted during that tri-series but not Zaidi. He was then told that he would be selected for the Test series, which again did not happen. To compensate him, he was selected for the Pakistan A squad for the Sri Lanka series.

Zaidi had a series of impressive outings for Pakistan A. He was successful against Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Namibia. Bob Woolmer, the then head coach of the national team, was convinced about including him in the squad. His dynamic batting, while also being a handy bowler had Woolmer communicate to the chief selector of that time that he wanted him in the side. But it all ended up in another disappointment.

Meanwhile, constant sidelining along with the stress of supporting his family put Zaidi under immense pressure. He lost his shape in the next couple of seasons and could not perform as well as he was performing in the past. The selection committee, which was already looking for a reason for not picking him all this while, got its chance to dump him again.

Zaidi, who currently plays for Essex, feels that his time has come. Looking back at his journey, he has no regrets though it was not the smoothest of journeys. “I have worked really hard to get to where I am today. It was a very long journey. It has been around 18 years now that I am playing professional cricket,” he says.

“I was so disappointed that after performing so consistently I was going nowhere. Such things hurt players emotionally. It affected my performance. So in the next season, I was not able to perform like I was doing for the past two years. I felt like the PCB was waiting for me to fail so that they could turn it into an excuse for not picking me,” he says.

But it didn’t end at his performance being affected. The constant mental stress and heartbreaks hit him so hard that a heart infection put him into the Intensive Care Unit. It was a serious infection, but Zaidi believes that the physical and mental pressure made it even worse. “In professional cricket you are tested physically as well as mentally, so I believe there was an impact of cricket on health that resulted in my illness. It was a viral infection, but due to mental pressure, it did get worse for me,” he says.

The doctors advised him to give up cricket altogether as his heart was not strong anymore. It was a shock for him as, apart from pursuing a dream, he was supporting his family through the sport. It was nine months before he could get back to fitness along with a positive frame of mind. “It was a difficult time for me as I had to keep myself going to also support my family financially. You are always thinking about what will you do, how will you manage things if you can’t make it to the top?”

Still, he recomposed himself and went into the 2009-10 season with determination, scoring a double century and three centuries in just seven games. During the season, Pakistan A was announced and the selectors once again kept him out. “It really hurt me. It also made me realise that I would never be able to make it to the national team. And all this while I was seeing players performing well in just one season directly land in the national side, whereas even after being consistent almost throughout my first class career, I was not on the selectors’ radar,” he says.

That was the moment when he realised he was not going to get anywhere in cricket in Pakistan. He left the season halfway and flew to England to start his life from scratch for his family. “I kept getting phone calls from the board to return to Pakistan and play the season as there was still hope for me. But, I knew it meant nothing,” he says.

Zaidi had tough early years in England. He had to work as a sales assistant in a store. He worked in a restaurant and did many such menial jobs. He never intended to play cricket professionally there, he only played leagues on weekends just to serve his passion, but becoming a county player was not in his plan. After getting British nationality, one of his friends advised him to contact the county teams and ask them to call him for trials. So he emailed all the possible county teams and was soon contacted by Sussex. “I had no idea how to do it, so I emailed all the counties mentioning my records and asked them to call me for a trial. Sussex finally replied to me. Their second team had their last match and they want me to play in that game,” he says.

The left-handed batsman was a capable player. He was also quite confident that, if given an opportunity, he would be able to avail it and do well. And he did exactly that. He scored 190 runs and also took four wickets in that life-changing contest. The performance was impressive enough to get him into any team of the world. He was immediately selected by Sussex for their main team. “They immediately selected me for their main team, which does not happen so often because their first choices are contracted players or their academy’s cricketers. You hardly ever see a guy from club cricket, and that too from another country, directly making it into the county side,” he says.

Zaidi played a handful of games for the main team and, seeing his consistent run, the county did not hesitate in handing him a fulltime contract. He felt relieved to have finally got something which he deserved, something for which he had strived for years. “So all my struggle did finally pay off. It is strange how the country you belong to, for which you work extremely hard, ignores you and an alien place welcomes you with open arms,” he says.

Like many Asians, Zaidi, too, faced racism in England but he does not complain about it as he puts favouritism in Pakistan right beside racism in the West. “Yes, there is racism there, but it is everywhere. There is no racism-free country. Racism I look at just like favoritism in Pakistan. They are two sides of the same coin,” he says.

The county stint opened up many doors for him. He played leagues all around the world, including the Pakistan Super League (PSL), where he played as a foreign cricketer. The 36-year-old was also the Man of the Tournament in the Bangladesh Premier League in 2015, which made him a hot pick for PSL’s inaugural edition in 2016. Zaidi was drafted by Islamabad United, the city for which he played throughout during domestic seasons.

“I did not know that I will play for my city, Islamabad. It was quite a coincidence. But it was good that we won the PSL in the first edition, which was a surprise for me. I am still in contact with Islamabad United’s management” he says.

Though Zaidi played just a single PSL season, he intends to get into a management role sometime in future, either in PSL or in domestic cricket. “It would be a dream for me to work in the capacity of a coach in PSL because I will always be a Pakistani at heart. There would be nothing better for me than an opportunity to be able to come back to Pakistan and work here in the PSL or even domestic cricket,” he says.

Pakistan had a disastrous run during the same Asia Cup, where Hong Kong almost beat India and gave the Men in Green a fight. Zaidi believes that coaching methods in Pakistan’s domestic cricket are obsolete and people like him need to be in the system to help cricket not become what hockey already has become in Pakistan. “You have to keep up with the game, you need to learn new techniques, new skills to stay in the game. What happened to our hockey that we are left so far behind in that game? I fear that our cricket may also face the same fate,” he says.

Zaidi, who currently plays for Essex, feels that his time has come. Looking back at his journey, he has no regrets though it was not the smoothest of journeys. “I have worked really hard to get to where I am today. It was a very long journey. It has been around 18 years now that I am playing professional cricket,” he says.

Having experienced disappointing failures and cherished successes, he has a simple piece of advice for youngsters. “I would advise kids today to work as hard as they can and have that passion to get to the highest level. Because it is only then that you can achieve your dreams.”

The writer tweets @Arslanshkh

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 11th, 2018